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Dick Clark: Eternally Light

April 18, 2012

Dick Clark, who died today, at the age of eighty-two, was the archetype of something that didn’t exist before he created it: the television personality. It’s hard to separate him from the growth of pop music and youth culture—he hosted “American Bandstand” from 1956 until the late eighties, but that was only a part of his empire, which also included radio, game shows, and of course “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” dropped “g” and all. An amiably ubiquitous presence on the small screen for more than a half-century, Clark became, in the last decade, a kind of ghost before his time. Debilitated by a December 2004 stroke, he missed the New Year’s broadcast for the first time since 1972; his return to the air after a year away was both admirable and awkward. Across the decades, he somehow discovered the secret of being not just eternally young but eternally light, a skill he passed along to his closest heir, Ryan Seacrest. Even back in 1959, Clark was already famous enough to be the subject of an episode of “This Is Your Life.”

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